Which is what exactly, Chris? Brian Burke? Bob Brown? PJK? Hugo Chavez? Tony Blair? Sharan Burrow? Graham Richardson?

I’m not suggesting that Garrett et al were making up the concern they were expressing in their lyrics. I am suggesting that it’s utterly ludicrous to criticise them for perceptibly straying from the worldview encompassed therein, twenty years after the event. They are allowed to grow up. They are allowed to moderate their views. They are allowed to develop their philosophies.

“Selling out” is a much over-used term to describe nothing very much at all except
getting older and wiser.

This may come as a shock, Chris, but remember when Roger Daltrey screamed that he wanted to die before he got old? He really meant it. At the time.

Geoff says we should never have assumed that Garrett really believed anything he sang. Singers are not to be held to their lyrics. Edith Piaf probably regretted plenty. Bono never even lost what he was looking for. we’re all gullible.

It was just a rock’n'roll band right? He described the young Oils as upper middle class guys who wanted to be sexy and successful . This perhaps says more about your own cynical view of others motives geoff than anything else. I don’t think anybody on this thread apart from you think that the Oils were anything but geniune.

And on Garrett himself: He

All your points taken except the last one: I don’t think, given what Garrett was already worth, that you can accuse him of ‘selling out’ in any but the most metaphorical sense and probably not that either. Perhaps, like many before him on both sides of politics, he joined whichever party with a snowball’s chance of hell of actually getting into power was nearest to his own position. Same reason why so many of us often vote holding our noses with one hand and crossing our fingers with the other.

I’ll tell you one thing, though — in one respect at least, namely his particular version of Christianity which seems to many of us not to bode too well for women’s rights, he is not radical at all.

1.) Greenpeace and the NDP don’t just have “lefy-sounding names”. They are far-left organisations.

2.) The point of listing these organisations is that Garrett is obviously way too left-wing for the Labor party. He didn’t just pretend to be a moonbat to sell records as Geoff Honnor claims – he really is one.

As I’ve said all along if Garrett joined the Greens nobody would have been surprised. Why did he sell out? I guess only Garrett can tell you that.

Regardless of his position on the political spectrum, Garret has been an active, committed leader and supporter of various groups, causes and bodies all his adult life. His personality is suited to it and he has had lots and lots of practice.

Whichever party he was in, I’d rather see someone like that in politics than somebody whose main claim to fame was getting leglessly pissed at the Young Corporate Lawyers Lamington Drive, the Young Christians for Bringing Back Fox-Hunting Sausage Sizzle and the Saint Custard’s Old Scholars Reunion Dinner.

Garrett served as president of the Australian Conservation Foundation from 1989 to 1993 and 1998 to 2004. He also joined the International Board of Greenpeace in 1993 for a two-year term. He served as adviser and patron to various cultural and community organisations including Jubilee Debt Relief, and was a founding member of the Surfrider Foundation.

Come on Geoff.

So yea, he will get away with some independence, because that’s why he is there. Whether he can walk that particular tight-rope, or whether caucus will throw the dog a bone or two to help him out, who knows?

My tip? Look for him to ‘win’ a major green-friendly battle with an outcome that just happens to be union-friendly: bones for all the dogs, press included.

Such manner of achievement no doubt is remembered by the opinionists, those being of age to be affected by it, and I’d suggest plays a role in the way he’s written up.

Bottom line – Peter G. was, and still is, associated with the extreme left views of the Oils, until such time as he decides to distance himself from those views. Problem is that he is in the party precisely to attract people with such views away from the Greens.

The most interesting aspect of the interview for me was the explicit confirmation from Garrett that he might at times publicly hold positions at odds with much of caucus and/or the party leader (eg his comments on uranium mining above) but that once party policy had been settled, if it differed from his view, he accepted the need to fall into line.

Terribly obvious in one sense but as I recall the previous thread, quite a few thought such overt independence wouldn’t be allowed within the Labor party or by the MSM. Seems to me if Garrett rolled over on everything he ever stood for his worth to the party would be less than zero. Many fans, after all, might just take this as final confirmation that mainstream politics is either pathetic or evil. Or both.

He’s in his 50′s and when people grow up they often moderate/broaden views that they held in their 20′s. In fact, it’s usually seen as a sign of maturity for them to do so. What would have been the point of Garrett joining the ALP if he wasn’t prepared to look at any policy position not already recorded in the Oils oeuvre?

Every time I hear some “serious journo” grill Garrett portentously on this rubbish I picture Michelle Grattan asking Celine Dion if her heart really does go on and if not, is she really being true to her life philosophy?

Fantastic tussle between Garrett’s passion and Turnbull’s discipline. Possibly the best this time around (the Howard Rudd tussle is shot through with ploys), where we have two souls exhibiting extraordinary instances of ambition. Each have compromised to get where they are, yet each appear not to have been eaten by the ‘machine’ – contrast that with the vast majority.

We are certainly the better for it, having these two there. It will be interesting to see if each learns from the other – that Turnbull takes on a modicum of passion by necessity, and Garrett takes on that forensic discipline? One rolls his sleeves up a bit, the other rolls them down? Or whether they fall back further onto their own strengths to make their electoral case.